Especially on these hot summer days, drink plenty of water. You should aim for eight 8 oz glasses a day. It will keep you hydrated, fuller, and is the best thing you can drink!

Are you hooked on soda? A 12 oz can of Soda usually has 40 grams of sugar. What is 40 grams? 4 grams of sugar equal 1 teaspoon. So one soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar! A 16 oz bottle of soda has 54 grams! This excess sugar along with other ingredients in soda are linked to an increased risk of diabetes and other diseases. Plus they will still leave you hungry and thirsty! This tiny 7.5 oz can of Coke has more sugar than two Reeses’s peanut butter cups!

If you are having a hard time giving up soda, try diluting it with seltzer. Over time, add less and less soda until you just need a splash of soda. Or use a soda stream machine, which allows you to make your own soda with better quality and choose how much flavor to add.

Diet sodas and drinks trick our bodies by being sweet, but then not giving us the calories to go with it. This will often make you crave sweets to make up for what your body feels it missed out on. They have also been linked to numerous diseases and should not be consumed daily. Please avoid these too.

Also, look at the labels in sports drinks, ice teas, lemonades, and juices. These also are surprisingly high in sugar too! Some have more sugar than soda.

You can add some berries, cucumber slices or some orange or lemon slices in your water to add a nice sweet flavor.

You can add water drops like Stur to your water. They come in a variety of flavors, so you can pick up a few and change it up as you go through your day.

Seltzers are constantly coming out in all sorts of cool flavors.  Give some of them a try!

If you do not like the fizz of seltzer, you can also try Hint- it has flavors added without the bubbles.

You can drink herbal teas, or make a simple sun tea with fun flavors like raspberry tea.